Friday, September 18, 2009

The all new Watchdog and PS3

Caught the new version of Watchdog last night with a returned Anne Robinson... oh dear gods what have they done to it? A live studio audience, why? A new flashy introduction that makes me expect some sort of children's game show hosted by Ant and Dec.

Well at least the actual reports themselves are unchanged although rather than dragging in the CEOs of the companies involved they seem to be pulling in the those who have been 'wronged' and celebrities to vent about how they've been 'wronged'.

Coincidentally they featured a report on the Yellow Light of Death with regards to the Playstation 3. The number the independent fixers have seen "A couple of hundred" number of PS3 consoles sold in the UK as of
this month - 2.5 million. Oh yeah this is obviously a systemic fault. They fix a few including one who wants to retrieve "precious photos of his graduation" which are "such important to me". Yeah that'll be called backing-up if they really are so important to you.

Okay Sony have messed-up a little here by charging £128 for a new refurbished model rather than attempt to fix the existing one (if that is indeed the case) especially when the Watchdog free fixers seem to have fixed 11 out of 11 consoles in exactly the same way (4 however have broken again).

However Sony offer a 1 year guarantee no different to most electrical appliances and 'I've just had a letter asking if I want to renew the extra insurance I took out at purchase with Game another year for £25 which includes free repair or replacement.

So to be blunt if you've got things on there that are that important back-it up and if you don't want to risk £128 on getting a refurb take out insurance odds seem to be around 200 out of 2.5million or .008% even if we assume it only affects the first models and also assume that there were only .5m sold it's still a failure rate of 0.04%. Going by this report into console failure rates the PS3 stands at 10% which isn't good, but the report only looked at consoles that it covered and weighted for usage the PS3 came in at 0.57% per 24 hours of use check the report directly.

So is it a failure on Sony's part or are people just running it hour after hour in a dusty ventilation-free area? Oddly Watchdog doesn't address that bit.

2 comments:

Orphi said...

Live studio audience?

&hellis;OK, won't bother watching that then.

Heh, do you remember back in the days when they reported on things like the food processor that still works after you've unplugged it? Or the PopTarts that pop out at a trillion degrees Centigrade and surgically weld themselves to your hands?

I think my favourit one was the discovery that the outside of an oven was hot enough to fry an egg…

Great days. Or… maybe not, actually…

FlipC said...

I've always held up Watchdog as an example of what a non-commercial channel can do over a commercial one.

No worrying about how this will affect their revenue instead what amounted to harassment and public shaming of companies when they were at fault and watching the squirming of the PR or CEO as they faced the inquisition knowing that they had to turn up because Watchdog was both that important and respected.

In the episode I watched we had no interviews with the companies just written statements and as mentioned the format has been youthified.

If this were the old Watchdog we'd have had the head of SCEE down there explaining how the YLOD is a minor matter; we'd have had someone from Trading Standards about the promotion WD mentioned. Instead we got the people 'wronged' and a celebrity none of whom can actually do anything.

Now I may have just picked a bad episode so I'll continue viewing, but it'd better pick up soon.